In recent years, with the development of Industry 4.0, China's manufacturing industry has developed rapidly from "manufacturing" to "intelligent manufacturing". 3D printing technology has been widely used in my country's manufacturing industry, and 3D printers can be used for molds. Design and manufacturing provide efficient, low-cost support. Even with the rapid development of 3D printing technology, in some fields, it has gradually begun to subvert mold technology and form a direct competitive relationship with it.

　　"Compared with 3D printing technology, traditional mold manufacturing requires more steps and processes, and the mold production cycle is longer. When a mold manufacturer launches a new product, the new product must pass strict international standards and certifications before it goes on the market. And the certification of many parts will take a lot of time. This will put new products in a very disadvantageous position in terms of time to seize the market. And 3D printing injection molds is an efficient solution. Well-known manufacturer Easy Molding does this , in their open laboratory, use 3D printing technology to make injection molds." According to Luo Baihui, secretary general of the International Mold Association, usually, it takes several weeks to two months to produce a mold, and the use of 3D printing technology Mold prototypes can be completed in a few hours and modifications can be made immediately based on test results. The final product sample is then injection molded. These product samples can be sent directly for certification, while traditional mold making may still be in production. Even before the mold is finalized, the 3D printed product has been certified, greatly shortening the development cycle. Only in the mold production cycle, 3D printing technology has had a certain impact on traditional mold manufacturing.

　　However, industry experts said that although 3D printing technology has many advantages such as short production cycle, convenient raw materials, uniform product pressure, etc., 3D printing technology cannot completely replace traditional mold manufacturing methods, because 3D printing technology is still in the production process. There are some problems. For example, 3D printing technology is to process products layer by layer. Although this will shorten the production cycle of the mold, it will also cause the surface of the mold to have a step pattern effect. Directly printed molds have a similar problem, requiring machining or sandblasting to remove these tiny, toothed edges. In addition, holes smaller than 1mm must be drilled, larger holes need to be reamed or drilled, and threaded features need to be tapped or milled. These secondary processes greatly weaken the speed advantage of 3D printing molds.

　　At the same time, in order to ensure good material flow properties, the injection mold needs to be heated to a very high temperature. Aluminum and steel molds typically experience 500F (260°C) or even higher temperature environments, especially when processing high temperature plastics such as PEEK and PEI materials. It is easy to produce thousands of parts from metal molds, and can also be used as transition molds before final production molds come out. The mold materials made by 3D printing technology are generally photosensitive or thermosetting resins, which are cured by ultraviolet light or laser. These plastic molds, although relatively hard, fail very quickly under the thermal cycling conditions of injection molding. In fact, 3D printed molds typically fail within 100 uses in mild, high-temperature plastics such as polyethylene and/or styrene. For glass-filled polycarbonates and high-temperature plastics, even only a few parts can be produced.

　　Also, a big reason for using 3D printed molds is their low cost. Production-grade machined molds typically cost $20,000 or more, implying a like-for-like comparison to $1,000 printed molds. But this analogy is not fair, and the evaluation of printing mold Chenben usually only considers material consumption, and does not consider labor, assembly and installation, injection system and hardware. For example, ProtoLabsd's aluminum molds cost $1,500 to produce. If more parts need to be produced, using 3D printed molds, every 50-100 products will need to be reprinted, and the assembly machine will test new molds. On the other hand, regardless of the plastic used, aluminum molds generally still serve well after 10,000 parts have been produced. Therefore, in terms of production costs, 3D printing is no more cost-effective than traditional mold-making methods.

　　In addition, in terms of product design, the principles and practices of traditional injection mold manufacturing have a history of more than a century, and the industry has thoroughly studied them. For example, the draft angle must be greater than or equal to 5 degrees to meet the requirements of most aluminum molds. 3D printing molds to inject plastic parts is a challenge, and extra care is needed for the number and placement of plastic mold thimbles. 3D printed molds (especially high injection temperatures) are somewhat more flexible in terms of increasing cavity wall thickness and reducing pressure. The gate design is also different and tunnel and point gates should be avoided. Direct gate, fan gate, wing gate should be increased to 3 times the normal size. The flow direction of the polymer in the printing mold should be in line with the 3D printing line to avoid high filling caused by stickiness and low pressure. The cooling system can increase the life of the mold to a certain extent, but it will not significantly reduce the cycle times of the printed mold, because the heat dissipation ability of 3D printed molds is not as good as that of aluminum or steel molds.

　　To sum up, 3D printing technology will not completely replace the status of traditional mold manufacturing. Because 3D printing molds still have certain shortcomings compared with traditional mold manufacturing in terms of finished product quality, product cost and mold design. Moreover, 3D printing is not suitable for mass production. The unit price of producing 1 piece and producing 10,000 pieces is basically similar, and 3D printing takes a long time. The current 3D printing technology can only be used for mold production with tight production cycle requirements for small batches, and traditional mold manufacturing is still the main method for mass production.